Rachel Nichols is and has been very intentional. The esteemed sports journalist has made a career of making choices. From her days as a college student to her time as a pro, the Emmy Award winner looks at every day as an opportunity to make a choice.
“I think doing things on purpose is a very good way to live your life, as opposed to just being a passenger and letting life happen,” said Nichols.
Nichols made a choice in college. As her well-meaning professors tried to steer her toward news reporting, she stayed steadfast on covering sports. As a child, she saw a woman in Christine Brennan covering the Washington Redskins and that gave her something to strive for. She wanted to work for the Washington Post.
Part of the deal at Northwestern University, where Nichols graduated, was an internship program that the school was attached to. Everyone had to do it for credit, and she made the choice to do sports.
“I had to go present to the board of the journalism program, about why I wanted to do it. They’d never done it before. But they finally let me do it. And that led to my first job and my first job was covering the University of Miami football team back in the ’90s when it was The U,” said Nichols.
She also covered hockey early in her career. There were times when she didn’t have a choice because she was a young reporter, but she made the choice to always put her best effort forward.
She wanted to work for the Washington Post, and they had an opening covering the hockey beat. Her experience at the Sun-Sentinel covering hockey helped pave the way back home. Nichols grew up outside of D.C.
As a young and hungry reporter, Nichols made the choice to say, “Yes.” For the Washington Post, she covered whatever they wanted her to cover, regardless of the sport. That included golf, tennis, baseball, hockey, football and basketball. She grew to really love football and basketball.
Nichols covered the Washington Capitals, and there was a time when she was 22 years old and there was some resistance from the team. They had never had a woman as their day-to-today beat writer, but Nichols made the choice to be herself. And she found a breakthrough during the preseason of her second year. A new player started making sexually explicit comments to her. However, before she could react, other players came to her defense, walked over to him and said, “That’s Rachel. We don’t do that to Rachel.”
After ten years with the Washington Post, Rachel Nichols decided to leave for the worldwide leader in sports, ESPN. During her time there, she was a Sideline Reporter for Monday Night Football. She decided to leave ESPN in 2013 for CNN and Turner Sports.
In 2014, Nichols made waves at a press conference held by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. She was stern in her questioning of the league’s handling, or lack thereof handling in the Ray Rice domestic violence case. She trended on twitter during the presser with viewers saying she should take over as the commissioner.
She also went toe-to-toe with boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. about his history of domestic abuse on her CNN show, Unguarded with Rachel Nichols. She felt she couldn’t talk to Mayweather and not bring up the fact that he had multiple convictions for beating people in his life. She held him to the fire, but she looked at it like she was just doing her job.
“You’re accountable to yourself for being fair. It’s important for me to not purposely be putting someone in a bad light with questions as opposed to caring about what the answers are. If you’re asking a question that’s fair, and you’re trying to get information, and you know your facts and you’re using them, there isn’t a question that you ever have to be afraid to ask. A tough fair question is a good question. There’s nothing scary about it,” she said.
In 2015, she made the choice to take more control of her career. She created a show, The Jump, for ESPN – the network’s daily NBA talk show debuted in 2016 and quickly became a platform for Nichols to share her thoughts and opinions in her opening monologue, and gave viewers great water cooler television with some of the biggest names and newsmakers surrounding the NBA.
It was only a continuation of her stellar career and track record landing the biggest and best interviews.
“These guys have seen me around, had the chance to see whether I am just showing up sort of quickly in and out or am I getting there early? Am I staying late? Am I bothering to go to the second practice? Once they see you do that, I think they’re more ready to have a real conversation. Then part of it is finding ways to ask questions that maybe aren’t the usual cliche questions,” said Nichols.
Sports is one of the few places left in America where people with differences gather under one umbrella. Nichols has been intentional about using her voice to have difficult conversations and ask the touch questions.
“Making your own choices and being a driver of your life won’t get everything you want, but it will get you more interesting scenery out the window.”
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